A successful short post is one that presents a simple concept comprehensively and is only short because that’s the right length for it.

Another problem, especially seen in financial reporting, is the use of trends of percentage changes of percentages! A simpler sample is, “…posted a lackluster increase in their margin growth rates”. Not to forget margin is a percentage, it is growing and its growth rate trend is being analyzed.

“Frame of reference” is exactly right in a broader sense: that is pretty close to Lakoff’s definition of a conceptual metaphor (as opposed to a figurative (“energy bar”) metaphor). “Per capita” is part of an overall conceptual metaphor of “flatness” (i.e. ideology of fairness/equality). If you push yourself, the image your mind will naturally conjure up when faced with a fact like “per capita consumption of icecream is X gallons per year” is to imagine a vast football field of people standing shoulder to shoulder, each with so many tubs stacked in front of them . To break this metaphor, it is only required to conjure up an inappropriate variable, like consumption of AIDS meds or diapers… per capita is meaningless because “fairness” is clearly silly. People are manifestly NOT equal in their needs/desires for such variables. “x per 1000″ (a liquid/concentration metaphor) is what we use in such cases.

And yeah, those were the good old days, when 2700 was short. I think my longest article to date has been well over 6000 (probably the “disposable American” piece on layoffs).

2. “Energy bar” post is a metaphor. Comparing no. of comments per word-in-post is not. Maybe I am missing something.

3. The key point is that the denominator limits or misguides our perspective. This somehow seems related to the choice of axis parameters you talked about in your quadrant diagram post. BTW we called that 2700-word post a small one by ribbonfarm standards!

Nice to see that the post sparks the associations I intended

You are demonstrating how powerful per-capita thinking is in your comment. You’ve reverted to it! “While our production of the world’s goods, no doubt, requires its fair share of energy inputs,…”

The nature of those goods matters in the definition of ‘fair’! The creative information work output of the US economy cannot be compared at the per-capita level to a factory worker helping churn out lots of identical widgets in China. It is not a question of whether a writer pushing the boundaries of global culture in New York’s Greenwich village deserves more energy than widget-cranker in China. He/she needs it to function (assuming we agree that art is as necessary to the global economy as cheap identical widgets).

“Waste” can be defined with respect to an unequal benchmark, which changes the conversation. Perhaps a “fair” energy allocation for the artist is 4x that of the Chinese widget maker, but he/she is getting 6x. So the extra 2x is inefficiency, and demanding it as an entitlement is not ok. But the base 4x is defensible.

However, linking America’s consumption of oil to the brain’s disproportionate consumption of oxygen feels like playing with volatile chemicals. While our production of the world’s goods, no doubt, requires its fair share of energy inputs, our entitlement mentality towards energy and our lackadaisical approach to conservation drive the per capita numbers disproportionately high.

Heather